My grandparents would stare at me from dusty, chipped frames occupying the top of the heirloom mahogany furniture piece strategically placed in the entrance hallway of my childhood house in Venezuela.  Grandma Agnes, my mother’s mother, drew me the most with her mysterious smile and bright blue eyes that bore through the aged photograph creating a luminous space around her. She sat on a bench on a porch somewhere during summertime when it was lush and sunny, Vermont, perhaps?  Or maybe her native Philadelphia?  I’ve no clue.  In the photograph she is close to the age she died, her early 70’s, and I suspect this was one of the few times my family shared with her, assuming I was there.  I would have been a toddler wreaking havoc on the other side of that porch.

Truth be told, the only memory …Read on

There is one day when the stove and I aren’t friends, where the skillet looks at me with suspicion, and the kitchen might as well be cordoned off in yellow crime scene tape. It is on this day that I am forced, even though my maternal clock has insisted I rise at 6:30 and no later, to stay in bed and feign leisure. It has a fuzzy metallic taste, leisure. I use all my brain power to try and recall what it truly feels like; to sleep in, to take a long shower, to go to the gym in the middle of the day just because. That all evaporated many moons ago when a bundle with chunky cheeks, beautiful eyes and a persistent squirminess was handed to me in a hospital room over eleven years ago. ‘You are …Read on

I’m lying on my bed trying to read and my stallion man’s presence could be felt nearby.  Not because he is tall and strong and manly, all of which, in my eyes of love, he most definitely is.  But rather, because his piss is so loud. Loud.  Louder than his yawn (which those who know him, know well and clear it to be loud).  Even louder than his voice, which melts into a smooth baritone whenever he croons secrets of love into my lobe but turns on a dime into an obnoxious, aggressive pitch of fury when a business associate is out of line, a deadline he expected met was not or a childhood friend calls him up to reminisce.  No, when my man is on the phone the meaning of  privacy is gone: everyone in the street, block and …Read on

A mother has free range to get desperate.  You moms out there know what I am talking about.  Non-moms, maybe not so much.  It goes pretty much like this, or at least, it did for me:

Non-mom declaration:

When I have kids they will never drink Coke.

Mom reality:

Only two cans dear. You have to eat some dinner.

Non-mom declaration:

My children, MY children of all children, will never step foot in a McDonalds!

(I can hear my sister-in-law’s laughter all the way from Omaha on this one…)

Mom declaration:

Gimme a Mighty Meal, double bacon cheeseburger, extra fries, Coke, and maybe another cheeseburger.

(Note: I still don’t touch the stuff, but they sure do!  Okay, I can’t say no to one or two or three french fries. Damn those french fries are good!)

So you get it. Maybe I was a bit idealistic.  Maybe I wanted to be like …Read on

Like many seven-year olds, my dad was my ultimate heroic figure.  He could do no wrong, say no wrong, and was always filled with an alluring intrigue.  He also was an amazing storyteller.  My father’s stories weren’t about monsters he battled with swords or rough oceans he bravely steered ships through or mythical creatures he aligned with to save the universe.  My father’s adventure tales were all real.  Born in Israel, then called Palestine, in 1933, my dad’s place in history gave him a first rate place in storytelling.

I was an eager and voracious listener, clinging onto his every word as if my life depended on it.  His stories where always vivid and alive and somehow woven in with food of some sort.   His mother’s incredible Lemon Meringue Pie was one of those food items that came up again …Read on